Fading away obsoleted ccTLDs: some technical suggestions

[crocodil@xxxxxxxxx]

Colleagues,

the problem with those two TLDs, specially with .SU, is that the
administrating organizations just ignore the ICANN's statements,
isn't it?

Precisely speaking, they ignore the decisions made by ICANN that
the domains are to be closed, and refuse to notify their users
about the fact the domains are not to be actively used any
longer. If we speak about .SU, the administrator even continues
commercial registrations in the zone which is to disappear in
accordance to the ICANN's policy. They have no right nor
permission to do so; the official page devoted to the .SU ccTLD
displays no official registration service URL, and as far as I
know there's no official agreement of any kind between ICANN and
the present administrator of .SU. However, they continue to tell
their customers that ICANN never took any official decisions
about removing of the domain and there's nothing to worry about,
and continue to collect money from lots of new unaware customers.

Once you publish another decision, they even start to say that
their customers perhaps will have to sue ICANN (!), while as far
as I understand, they'd better sue the unfair administrator.

Definitely all this fraud needs to be stopped. If you let the
things be as they are, this violation of the well-known ccTLD
delegation policy will be used as a good example for more unfair
people who deal with domains. Don't let this go.

However, I perfectly realize you don't wand to do too much harm
to those customers; unfairness of the ccTLD's administrator is
not a reason to beat customers. Well, the problem is that any
public statements about the domain removal to take place in the
near future, will effectively NOT BE HEARD by the customers
because they tend to listen to their domain registrator rather
than ICANN; most of them just don't know what ICANN is and how
does DNS operate.

So, my suggestion is to take the power away from the unfair
administrators of obsoleted ccTLDs. This easily can be done by
taking an AXFR snapshot of the ccTLD DNS zone. The snapshot can
then be placed to some ICANN-controlled DNS servers, and the
delegation of the ccTLD can be changed accordingly.

This action can start the actual sunset period. Having no
technical ability of registering new domains and changins DNS
servers for the existing ones, the ex-administrator will just
HAVE to stop unfair registrations and finally tell the customers
the truth: the domain is to be removed. It's obvious that your
message about the domain's removal will definitely be heared.
 From the other hand, the existing domains will continue to
operate, so most of the users will have enough time to bring up
alternative sites, place redirectors and notify all their
partners about changing of all the relevant URLs.

The solution has a certain drawback, which is in the fact the
users of SLDs will have no capability to change DNS servers for
their domains during the sunset period. I realize ICANN can't
take this activity because it would require ICANN to know all the
SLD customers, their credentials, etc.

Ok, in fact I believe it's not too bad. This will probably force
some of SLD users to move to another TLD faster; and you know
it's always possible to keep DNS servers just where they are for
another month or two, if one really needs the domain to continue
operation.

If it's not too hard technically, you possibly should get rid of
lame delegations diring the sunset period, that is, if the server
on which a SLD is delegated stops to serve as the authoritative
server for the SLD, the delegation should probably be removed. It
is not obligatory though.

Anyway, the sunset period must be not too long. I believe 6 month
will be sufficient. A period of 1 year is an absolute maximum.
After that, the delegation of the domain should be removed.
Please take into the account you have already made LOTS of
official statements, so you're absolutely free even to drop the
domain from the root zone right now, without any sunset periods.
BTW, this is the thing which should be done in case the
administrator of .SU or .TP will refuse to give away the AXFR
snapshot of the zone.



In fact, I strongly believe that the domain .SU should have
disappeared several years ago, before Platonov's crew opened the
commercial registrations in it. I even sent you a letter in 2001,
with the title "Unfair games around ccTLD .SU", here is it:
http://www.ofisp.org/forum-d/0110/msg00018.html

If you have heard my warning, you'd have lesser problems now. Ok,
the things done are just that: done. But the longer you wait with
all this, the more problems you have doing the right thing.
Please don't wait any longer and take actions.

BTW, let me say I feel ashamed for all those people who send you
crap like "hands off SU" and the like. Most of them don't know
what DNS is; they are just victims of unfair propagation by the
.SU crew. They even don't realize it's against the netiquette to
answer the questions which noone have asked. You don't ask
whether .SU should be removed or not, you just ask HOW should it
get removed. And that's right, the consistent policy of the root
zone is far more important for The Internet than someone's
corporate or political ambitions. So, please don't listen to
those barbarians. They don't know what they do.






With the best regards,
Andrey Stolyarov


P.S. I'm not affiliated with any ISPs or other telecommunication
companies since late 2000, so you can feel absolutely free about
me serving any unfair competition interests. The only thing I
consider is keepeng the order within the root DNS zone. Being on
Internet since 1993, I know how important it is.